Netherlands down a Nobel Prize as winner loses his Dutch nationality

The Netherlands has lost one of its Nobel Prize winners. Andre Geim, a Dutch-British physicist awarded the prize in 2010 for discovering graphene, has lost his Dutch nationality, the Volkskrant reports.

Dutch nationality automatically expires when someone takes on another nationality. Geim, who lives in Great Britain, told the newspaper that he received an email from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informing him that this had happened to him. “I was told that I had to hand in my passport to the Dutch embassy in London or Interpol would come after me.”

“I am very disappointed that I have lost my Dutch nationality, and I am very angry about it. The official reason is that I became British about twelve years ago because I was given a British knighthood, for which that was a requirement. I probably would have turned it down if I had known what that would mean for my Dutch nationality. I protested to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the IND, but to no avail,” Geim said.

Geim, originally from Russia, worked at Radboud University in Nijmegen in the 1990s and took Dutch nationality. When he got his Nobel Prize, it was celebrated as a boost to Dutch science. He is still affiliated with Radboud University as a special professor.

“I consider myself a Dutch-British Nobel Prize winner – in that order – and I have fond memories of my time in the Netherlands, where I lived and worked,” Geim said. “It is so sad and strange. Somewhere in The Hague, there is a bronze bust of me to show off, and even the English Wikipedia calls me Dutch. I have received a royal honor: I am Commander in the Order of the Dutch Lion. And yet I was kicked out of the country as a useless thing.”